Nursenanci@aol.com

I was banded on 11/15/10 and have lost 45 lbs with 35 left to go. We will be taking a 7 day cruise May 7 and I admit I am alittle nervous about the food. I have a signifigant about of restriction which always keeps me alert yet as my Dad used to say sometimes " my eyes are bigger than my stomach." I am hoping to replace that with the joy of being on a nice trip with my 92 year old Dad and my sister. We just lost Mother 2 months ago and decided we needed some good times together.

The Lap Band was the one good thing I had going for me when Mother was dying. It made me feel I atleast had control over some aspect of my life and the weight loss rather than weight gain kept me positive in a very trying time.

Do we have any people here that have taken cruises since their surgery? It use to be that it was a struggle to not gain weight on a cruise, or to fight to get it off after the cruise. I've taken 5 cruises so far, 2 of them after my lapband, and I have the next cruise coming up in May. My wife had the bypass and this will also be her 3rd cruise since surgery.

We both reached our goal weights before cruising and are near those goal weights now. If you have cruised, you are aware of things like the Noro-virus and other illnesses. They give the cruise lines fits and lot of bad press. So there are steps the cruise lines take to fight these type of illnesses. One of those is you sign a form when you board that says you aren't sick and haven't been sick in 24 hours. The one on Royal Caribbean specifically asks if you have vomited in the last 24 hours.

On our last cruise, my wife ate something the morning of the cruise that gave her the dumping syndrome. She fought it for about 20 minutes, finally evacuated it and felt normal 5 minutes late. I knew what had happened to her and understood why. However, 2 hours later when we boarded the ship, I filled out the form, and lied. I knew she wasn't sick, so i didn't feel bad about lying. Had I honestly answered yes, one of a couple of things might have happened, which is why I am posting this to see if anyone else has been through this. Anyway, the best thing that would have happened if I was honest if they would have denied us boarding until they had a doctor come out and speak to us, hopefully they would understand we would have boarded normally. But I could easily see that delaying our boarding by as much as an hour or two. The next possibility is we would have waited then put in quarantine in our cabin for some length of time. The worst case if they would have just denied us boarding Knowing she was perfectly healthy I wasn't prepared to accept any of these possablities. So I lied.

On my first cruise after my band and being close to my goal weight I boarded the ship normally and honesty and was at lunch in the buffet. I swallowed a piece of chicken that was too big and got stuck. I knew it had to come out, if you know what I mean. I was deathly afraid of being sick and quarantined. Our rooms were not yet available so I had to use a public rest room and I actually waited in it for 10 minutes for it to be empty.

Any one else had any issues with cruising? We soon leave for our our 30th anniversary and 7 days in the carribean. I'm looking forward to a week of great fun,eating and hopefully gaining no more than a pound or two.

I was 65 when I had the Lap-Band done 11-15-10. It has been a wonderful experience so farn and I wish I had done it sooner.